


sometimes when you yearn, you burn the air

by Boniface



Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Angst, Jack has a heart of gold okay, Kissing, M/M, Minor Character Death, Storytelling, and David is head over heals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-12
Updated: 2017-05-12
Packaged: 2018-10-30 23:08:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10886820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boniface/pseuds/Boniface
Summary: “What was she like?”“My ma?” Jack looked taken aback. His cigarette hung from his pink lips. David bit his own lip.“Yes,” Davey asked. Perhaps it was too intrusive but they had been friends for so long and he knew so little about Jack. He knew what he saw. He knew the Jack there before him, yet he never quite knew how such a person came to be. Davey had once, and sometimes still, fancied that Jack had manifested out of thin air, a fully formed enigma who existed to enchant, bedevil, or mystify everyone who came into contact with him.orDavid and Jack confront death, grow up, and live a little.





	sometimes when you yearn, you burn the air

**Author's Note:**

> This is the second fic I've written with a title the same song from the little women musical interestingly enough...
> 
> This was obvious meant to be a lot longer. I abandoned it awhile ago but thought it still had some merit so decided to post it. Hope you like it!

Davey Jacobs had never contemplated losing his parents. Not in more than the abstract way where he knew that when he was an old man, they would be dead. Then Sarah had sent a telegraph to him at college. 

David’s Papa had always been the rock of the family, even when he’d been injured. He’d never been like other boys’ fathers who drank and screamed and beat. His voice had always been accented with Russian and love. His touches had always been kisses to the forehead and ruffles of the hair. They were familiar and steadying things that meant ‘Look here. You are loved.’ 

He did not know what to do with the prospect of never being kissed on the forehead again or having his hair ruffled. Even at twenty-three, he was still a child in some ways. 

His mother pulled him into a hug when he arrived at the door. He only could hug her back like a lost child. He did the same to Sarah and his little nieces. Mama took him quickly to his father’s bedside. 

Mayer Jacobs in the bed looked small and fragile and pale. He was a tall man. Standing, he towered over Davey but like the porcelain figurines his mother kept on a shelf in the china cabinet. He was sleeping. The Doctor, his mother said, had given him medication to help the pain. It put him to sleep.

Davey watched him for a little bit from the chair beside the bed but said nothing.

He kissed Papa’s forehead, though he feared touching him. He had only even been allowed to touch Mama’s figurines during spring cleaning. Papa might break. But then was not cold and hard like the porcelain. He was hot to the touch and slick with sweat. 

He took his father’s hand and sat there for a long time. His mind wandered to sunlit childhood days when his father took him to the park, to the zoo, and to a baseball game. It didn’t matter much where they’d been. They’d been together.

He left the bedroom wiping his eyes. Mama was sitting on the couch, Sarah was in the old wingback in the corner feeding the baby, the little girls were on the floor with crayons and day old papes, and Jack Kelly was there with them. 

He smiled at Davey and said “Hi,” which sent Davey’s stomach flip-flopping. He wanted to hit himself for it and pushed the feeling away.

“Where’s Les?” He asked his mother. 

“Work,” Mama said. 

“Work? He has school tomorrow,”

“He’s taking some time off. Mr. Sachs gave him a job at the deli when Papa got sick,” Sarah said she took the bottle from the baby’s mouth and put it on the side table. “Ernie took up a second job. I had to quit mine. It’s too much for Mama to care for Papa and the girls.” 

“How long has Papa been sick?” He had assumed until now it was sudden.

“Since the Summer,” Sarah said raising the baby to pat her back. 

“You should have told me. I would have come sooner.” Davey spoke furiously. “I’ll write to my roommate to send my things. I’ll get a job tomorrow. I’ll--”

“Dave.” Jack said. He had a red crayon behind his ear. Jack had always had some strange sort of sway over David. If he was being perfectly honest with himself, he knew what it was about but David had never been good at being honest with himself about Jack.

Still, he wanted to know why no one in the family had written him. Sarah should have told him. Jack should have, since he obviously had become half a regular family member since David left. What if Papa had taken an unexpected turn and died before David could get home? He asked Sarah as much after Mama went back into the bedroom. It was the kind of thing that would upset her.

“Just be glad that he didn’t.” Sarah said and gave him a fierce look. She had been part mother ever since he could remember. Sarah seemed satisfied with his quietness so she stood from her chair. “Girls, time for bed,” 

All three of his little nieces groaned.

“I’ll take them,” Dave said.

“I’ll help,” Jack said cheerfully, and lifted Anna, the oldest, by her middle while he stood. She shrieked in delight. He grabbed Ruthie, the littlest, next and she squealed. Middle child, Evie, stood looking up at Jack with Sarah’s big blue eyes. Jack smiled at her. “Climb on board,” 

He stooped down and she threw her little arms around his neck. Weighted with children like a pack mule, Jack carried them to their bedroom. 

David went to follow and Sarah stopped him. “Make sure they get to sleep. Jack likes to baby them and they know all they have to do it is pout to get their way.”

“I can handle them,”

“The girls are easy. It’s Jack you have to worry about,” Sarah said, as if David didn’t know Jack that Jack was never easy. As if he hadn’t looked at that stupid handsome grin and been charmed into doing dozens of things he’d never wanted to do.

He just rolled his eyes congenially at Sarah.

Jack was shaking the girls off him when Dave went into the bedroom and they were each holding on, laughing. He was very strong to be able to hold them all up. His muscles were prominent under his shirt. David chided himself for how ridiculous he was being.

“Come on, gidoff you good for nothins,” He teased them and gave another good shake.

“Need a little help?” Dave asked.

“Yeah, it seems some little monkeys decided that I’m a tree,” She said and the girls giggled. “Mind playing zoo keeper?”

“Alright, who’s first?” Davey rubbed his hands together. “littlest?”

David tickled Ruthie’s sides and she started squealing and squawking kicking her legs while she hung onto Jack’s shoulder. She let out a whopping laugh let go of Jack and fell onto the bed. 

“Middle?” He went in for Evie who dropped before he could get her and then went Anna before he could even call for her. 

“Gee, Uncle Davey, you make a good zookeeper huh?” Jack smiled flexing his arms. “But I don’t think this job is complete.”

“No, I think these little monkeys need to get under their covers,” Davey responded and they both looked at the girls, who stared up at them with naughty smiles. 

“Uncle Davey,” Anna said, drawing out her vowels. “I want a story.”

“Story!” repeated Ruthie, only half intelligible. “Story!”

“Get under the covers and we’ll tell you a story,” Davey propositioned. The girls each raced to get under the covers and Jack sat on the end of it, cross legged. It was Davey’s old rickety brass bed that he and Les had shared their whole childhood, fashioned with a pick and blue quilt from Sarah’s hope chest. 

Dave stood below the footboard.

“Come on, Dave, you frozen there? Take a seat. Get comfortable. Stay awhile,” He said patting the spot beside him at the end of the bed. Jack smiled and the girls laughed. Dave’s cheeks felt warm. He felt ridiculous. Jack hadn’t made him feel this way in so very long.

(He hadn’t been around Jack in so very long.)

Davey sat, with one leg under him and the other off the side of the bed. His knee was close to brushing with Jack’s. 

“What kinda story do you want to hear?” Jack asked.

Anna wanted an adventure story and Evie wanted a love story and Ruthie only repeated “story, story, story,” over and over again. 

“Hm, I think I got just the story to tell yous guys,” He grinned. “My ma used to tell it to me when I was a little boy. Even smaller than Leah,”

Davey looked at Jack, surprised. He’d never spoken of his mother.

“It’s an old Irish story about a lady named Deirdre. It’s love story and an adventure story. Do you want to hear it?” Jack asked and the girls nodded. “Okay, now if I can only remember… I’m just teasing. Once upon a time there was this King named Con-Ca-Bar.” 

The girls giggled and Jack smiled.

“Hey, I don’t make up the names!” Jack said. He told the story of Deirdre with as much beauty and humor as he could paint with. He could do an impression of the Irish princess that sounded strikingly accurate. David wondered if he was copying his mother’s speech. 

When Deirdre was just a baby, it was prophesied that her great beauty would bring about a war in Ireland. So her father locked her in a tower with nothing but a nanny to care for her. Deirdre, it seemed, was as brave and feisty as she was beautiful. She fell in love with the greatest fighter in Ireland and colluded with her nanny to defy her father. She reminded David of Katherine. 

“And so Deirdre and Knee-sha built a big house in Scotland.” Jack had a strange look on his face as he paused. “And they had two children, a boy and a girl, and they lived happily ever after.”

That didn’t seem right to David, who had read Oedipus and Macbeth. Prophecies were always fulfilled. Yet Deirdre somehow got her happily ever after and there was no war. Perhaps it was because Jack had lost most of his audience. Ruthie was already asleep. Anna looked dreamy. Only Evie was still bright-eyed.

“‘nother story,” She asked and David could see Jack waver. 

“Maybe you can dream up another story,” Sarah said hushed, from the doorway. She had Leah fast asleep in her arms.

“You heard your Mama,” Jack shrugged and stood. 

“Uncle Jack,” Evie raised her arms. “Uncle Davey. Goodnight kisses.”

Both of them kissed Evie’s cheeks and Davey wished her “Sweet dreams,” while Sarah laid Leah in the crib. Sarah wished both of them a good night and kissed both their cheeks as they left.

In the parlor, Jack looked at Davey and Davey looked back at him. “Wanna go up to the roof?”

David didn’t know what he wanted to do, besides go to sleep and wake up in a world where his father wasn’t dying and Jack wasn’t standing so close to him. “Okay,”

They took the fire escape two at a time. They sat down on a bench below someone’s forgotten laundry quiet for a while. Neither of them had been quiet so long. David didn’t like the quiet and it often made him say such stupid things. 

“That’s not how Deirdre’s story ends, is it?” David said into the cold night air. 

“No, it’s not,” Jack agreed. He was lighting up a cigarette. 

“She does start a war, then,”

“Yeah, and her husband dies,” Jack said. “So she brains herself on a rock.”

Just the thought of blood and brains made Davey queasy. “Prophecizes are inescapable,” 

“In stories,” Jack said. “In real life, people escape them all the time. People can dream. People change things.”

Davey didn’t want to argue the opposite. He didn’t want to be the one to say that very often prophecies did fulfill themselves. Sometimes, things just were the way they were and you could do nothing about it. Jack was the dreamer between the two of them. 

And the realist. 

Jack was many things.

“Your mama would tell you the whole story?” He asked. 

“She told me a lot of stories,” Jack said and blew smoke out of his nostrils. They swirled into the sky and vanished. “Some were happier than others,”

“What was she like?”

“My ma?” Jack looked taken aback. His cigarette hung from his pink lips. David bit his own lip.

“Yes,” Davey asked. Perhaps it was too intrusive but they had been friends for so long and he knew so little about Jack. He knew what he saw. He knew the Jack there before him, yet he never quite knew how such a person came to be. Davey had once, and sometimes still, fancied that Jack had manifested out of thin air, a fully formed enigma who existed to enchant, bedevil, or mystify everyone who came into contact with him. 

“She was real pretty,” Jack smiled. “She would tell me stories about Ireland. She said one day we’d go out west to a dude ranch. We’d ride horses and talk spanish. She used to sing me to sleep. She’d kiss my forehead all the time. Then she died. I was seven.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It was a long time ago,” Jack shook his head and tossed the butt of his cigarette to the ground. He crushed it under his foot. 

Davey had heard that time healed all wounds but he was skeptical of that statement. You might think that after six years of friendship, Davey wouldn’t feel as though his chest was being ripped open every time he looked at Jack Kelly.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be okay once Papa…” David stopped himself and Jack looked at him like he was seeing for the first time in his life.

“You’ll be okay,” Jack said and David almost believed him. “You got loads of memories of him. You’ll remember and you’ll be sad but then you’ll smile.”

“Is that what you do?” David said. He could smell the tobacco and nicotine on Jack’s breath. He didn’t know when they’d moved so close together.

Jack smiled. “When I miss my mama. Or my pop. You too.”

“Me? I’m not dead,” David said seriously. He hoped he wasn’t dead. He didn’t feel too alive right now.

“No, but I miss you all the time when you’re away at school.” Jack put his rough hand on Davey’s cheek. He couldn’t breathe. If Davey really was alive now, he wouldn’t be for long. “You drive me wild, Dave,” Jack chuckled. 

David didn’t know what that meant. Words lost all meaning with Jack so close. “What are you doing?” He hated the way he sounded so desperate.

“Waiting for you to stop me,” Jack was leaning in and David couldn’t do anything but lean in as well. Their lips met and for the brief moment David was sure if he did die, it would be happy. Jack’s lips were hard and cracked and forceful, totally unlike the few girls Davey had kissed over the years. He tasted like cigarette smoke and beer. It was foreign but familiar. It felt like coming home when Jack sucked on Davey’s bottom lip, when he pushed his tongue into Davey’s mouth, when Davey returned to gesture.

His father was dying and David was on the roof kissing a boy. He was kissing Jack Kelly. Jack Kelly was kissing him too.

Jack pulled away. “I’ve wanted to do this so long, Dave,”

“Dave,” Jack repeated. He reached up to wiped below David’s eye. It was wet and David hadn’t even realized.

“We can’t do this,”

“Why not?” Jack protested. His lips were wet and red, the bottom one especially. 

“We just can’t,”

“You want it,” Jack asserted, too right. 

“It doesn’t matter what I want.” 

“When are you gonna learn that sometimes it does?” Jack didn’t sound angry. He just sounded sad. He put a hand in David’s hair and pulled their lips together again. David didn’t pull away until Jack did again.

“We should go back down. Everything will be okay, Dave, I promise,” Jack smiled handing Davey his handkerchief. David dried his eyes and realized, not for the first time, that he trusted Jack Kelly with all his heart.


End file.
